New Yorkers remember the sky from that day. Sept. 11, 2001, dawned a clear, brilliant blue. Only hours later, that same sky was blotted with a terrible black cloud and the streets of lower Manhattan choked with dust and debris after two hijacked planes crashed through the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The city's skyline, and our way of life, would be forever altered.

Shock. Horror. Fear. Pain. Disbelief. Grief. These emotions are forever frozen on the faces of the New Yorkers captured in these photographs as they react to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and watch their city crumple in a rain of dust and mangled steel.

Lower Manhattan was transformed into a wasteland of wreckage in a matter of hours on Sept. 11, 2001. Rescue efforts quickly became recovery missions, and smoke hung over the ruins of Ground Zero for months as the city faced a cleanup and rebuilding effort unlike any in its history.

There was a hole in the city’s skyline after the twin towers of the World Trade Center crashed to the ground in a smoldering mountain of ash and twisted steel on Sept. 11, 2001. To channel a collective grief, New Yorkers across the five boroughs turned to paint, creating commemorative murals to remember the buildings and to honor the thousands of people who lost their lives.
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Christian...

People turned to the flag on Sept. 11, 2001, clinging to a national symbol of unity as they struggled to comprehend the new American reality – a world stripped of our longstanding sense of impenetrability. The flag appeared amid the Ground Zero ruins, on fire trucks, porches and T-shirts as we attempted to heal and vowed to never forget.

Their urgent hunt for survivors proved mostly futile, but they did not give up easily. The team of first responders working tirelessly to find and rescue victims at Ground Zero included a dedicated team of rescue dogs who performed daring feats to scour the area for life. They worked to exhaustion alongside their human counterparts.